Connecting Africa’s Skilled Professionals
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Ike Anya
I was educated at....
…..King’s College Lagos, the College of Medicine at the University of Nigeria and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. My specialist training in public health was on the South West of England Training Programme, during which I gained membership and fellowship of the Faculty of Public Health UK.
My first job was....
…..a vacation job as an admin assistant at Fidelity Union Merchant bank in Lagos in 1989 when my university was closed down by the military government. My first postgraduate job was as house officer at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital.
What I do now is....
….I’m a consultant in public health medicine in the Triborough Public Health Service for Westminster, Hammersmith & Fulham and Kensington & Chelsea and Deputy Director of Public Health for the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. I am an honorary lecturer at Imperial College and also teach at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Ike Anya is a Nigerian public health doctor and writer.
A Consultant in Public Health Medicine and Deputy Director of Public Health in central London, he is currently on sabbatical and helping set up EpiAfric, a public health research, training and consultancy outfit in Abuja.
Co-Editor of Nigeria Health Watch and Co-Founder of TEDxEuston, he is a founding trustee of the Public Health Foundation of Nigeria and a TEDGlobal Fellow (2007).
Founding Secretary of the Abuja Literary Society, he co-edited the Weaverbird Collection of Nigerian Fiction (Farafina 2008).
He is working on a book and an excerpt from it was published as “People Don't Get Depressed in Nigeria” in Granta in 2012.
What I learned along the way is…
….My first consultant as a registrar, Dr Angela Raffle always told me to try to put myself in other people’s shoes, that it would help me in influencing them. She also taught me to learn from positive as well as negative experiences. If I came back from a meeting moaning about how badly it had gone, she would ask me to think about how I could have made it go better.
The greatest influence on my life has been……
… my parents- we were brought up in a Christian tradition of excellence, humility, independent thought and service to others.
The best advice I ever received is…
….when you receive criticism, even when you are upset by it, ask yourself “How are they right?” There’s often a nub of truth in there somewhere. This came from Vega Roberts, an organizational analyst I worked with early in my management career.
My top tips for succeeding in my career area are…
….be proactive, work hard to ensure that you have got the basic skills right, be clear about your values and your motivation and build your resilience
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